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Friday, July 26, 2013

Favorite Scene Friday! Forgetting Sarah Marshall: "Dracula's Lament"

Well, we've made it to another Friday and that means it's time for a favorite scene...but we've got another special guest to do the honors this week! The name French Toast Sunday should be familiar around here. FTS Head Honcho Lindsay did a Favorite Scene Friday for us a few months back and today we've got Jess from FTS doing the honors! Her choice is near and dear because I actually meant to feature it for FSF at some point. I can't be mad at her, however, because she's done a better job talking about the scene than I ever could have. When you get done reading and watching Jess' Favorite Scene Friday, go check out her list of Top 6 Cover Songs Performed by Movie Characters. You can also catch Jess on Twitter at @jess_fts.

After going back and forth about what scene I should pick for the great honor of participating in Favorite Scene Friday, I decided to go with a scene that I think of fondly and often. I absolutely love Forgetting Sarah Marshall and happen to think it's the most underrated of the Apatow-family films. Then again I have a crush on Jason Segel, am a Kristen Bell enthusiast, and Mila Kunis devotee. Not to mention, this film is the one responsible for introducing (to American audiences at least) the hilarious lunacy of Russell Brand. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is the passion project of Segel and within that his less likely to prosper project of a puppet Dracula musical.

About halfway through the movie Peter takes his new found love interest Rachel to a bar where she secretly signs him up to perform a song from his musical. I love how reluctant he is but Rachel (a perfectly cast Kunis) forces him to sing the song with her cheers. Almost immediately after "Dracula's Lament" starts you can see on her face that this was probably a miscalculation on her part. Segel puts on his Dracula voice and sings this brilliant song. It's actually really great (I learned all the words after rewatching this part about 10 times in a row midway through my first watch). When it kicks in with the line "And if I see Van Helsing..." it goes from being comically cute to full on hilarious.

It's also perfect because of the way it was introduced to the story. Watching the movie the first time, I thought "Wow, what a random thing to be in this movie," and later when I learned that Segel basically included this completely separate idea he'd been working on into his script because he never thought anything could come of it, I was astonished. As weird as the Dracula musical is within this movie, it actually works perfectly because of Peter's character. Not only that, but it doesn't feel shoe-horned in just because--it's actually a character driven force that becomes imperative to how the plot unfolds.

And for some extra laughs, here's Peter's depressing song from later in the film. The line "go see the psychiatrist/I hate the psychiatrist" gets me every time.

Great movie AMAZING scene. I love how he pauses before he starts singing. All of the little musical moments in this movie are great, even the earlier scene when he's drunk in his hotel and plays a bit of the Muppet Show Theme (http://youtu.be/YqN1_7p2ok4).